Join Department 42, a secret organization devoted to the paranormal, and protect the world! Help Agent Alice Wright track down nine mysterious and evil artifacts that have gone missing. Use your Hidden Object skills to protect the planet from the nightmare that has been unleashed and restore order! Travel across the country and piece together the enigma that is Department 42: The Mystery of the Nine!

Customer Reviews

Department 42: The Mystery of the Nine
3.1
5
19
19

Great game with a good story as well
This takes a while to finish. There are many hidden object as well as many mini games. I loved the story line as well. It keeps you interested. Some of the mini games are difficult as well, and I had to skip a few out of frustration. LOL
March 17, 2012

High Quality Fun
Pluses: Excellent graphics, non-intrusive music that changed with the different quests, HOS very well-done (and if a scene was repeated (which was rare), the objects already found did NOT reappear - thank you, developers!!), entertaining story-line for a game of this type, mini-games of varying degreee of difficulty (see below) that were a bit out of the ordinary, good length. All these pluses make the game eminently replayable, not always the case for this kind of game. Plus, once a HOS or a mini-game is completed, it becomes playable on its own.
Minuses: Two of the mini-games (in particular, the last one) were pretty tough, at least for me. However, they were skippable and also there is a good walkthrough available. Likewise, a few (maybe 5 total) of the hidden objects were EXTREMELY hard to find (but you could always use a hint). And finally, as is sometimes the case when non-native speakers design the HOS, a few (a maximum of five in the whole game) of the objects had names that were not familiar to a US person (but I had no trouble figuring them out, and the narative was perfectly fine in terms of the translation). I am only mentioning these minuses because they might bother some people but they in no way detracted from the game for me.
May 10, 2012

another good gamer
thought this game was pretty amazing like the story line
January 13, 2012

Very interesting game!
Plus = I had heard about this game, so was pleased when it showed up as a Daily Deal. The storyline was interesting, and the game played well without any technical problems. In this game you are hunting for nine supernatural relics (artifacts) in order to save the world. You visit various locales in your quest. The game play was easy for me, and I was able to complete the game without having to resort to using a Strategy Guide or Walkthrough. The visuals and graphics were also clear and crisp on my desktop computer.
Minus = Players who do not like occult or supernatural themes (which I love) may be uncomfortable with this game.
November 27, 2011

Great Game!
This is a great game!
You are searching for missing artifacts that cause strange things to happen to the people that possess them.
The story line has many mini stories as you track down these artifacts. As the demo finished, I had only collected one of the 7 artifacts and was working on the second.
Based on this, the game may have a long play time.
The graphics and sound are good.
There are many hidden object scenes and mini games. Some are easy and some a bit of a challenge.
This will be a great Daily Deal purchase for our ever growing collection of games from Big Fish.
May 8, 2012

Department 42: The Mystery of the Nine
I have to give credit when credit is due, this game has unique, out of the box thinking, features which makes it just different enough to stand apart from the hundreds of hidden object adventure games available.
You are Alice Wright, a 28 year old Lieutenant who works for Department 42. Your agency investigates paranormal phenomena, in a previous investigation, several artifacts were found that were as powerful as they were cursed, and the Agency hid those artifacts in the Grimstone Manor. Four months ago, the Manor was burned to the ground, and the artifacts have been stolen! These artifacts must be recovered before they cause cataclysmic damage, starting with the Fang of the Packleader, which can turn an ordinary man into a beast, a werewolf!
You can use the map located to the left of the screen to quickly travel between locations, if the indicator is green, you have current tasks available there and blue indicates that there are no current tasks in that location. Each location has it's own set of tasks that are listed on the right of the screen such as find a way to open the fridge or find the hidden niche and find a way to open it. Most of the items you need to complete that location's tasks are within that location.
Each scene has a Hidden Object Scene, which are extremely well done. Trust me, even if you're a seasoned veteran of HO's like myself, you will have to spend some time looking for many of the items. They aren't difficult to find because of poor graphics or unrealistic sizes, they are just plain and simply blended and hidden very well, bravo devs for this welcomed challenge! I absolutely loved the mini game where you had to decipher a message written as a code with various symbols. The letters of the alphabet are at the top of the screen, and there are two pictures in the middle, a werewolf and a moon, the words are written with symbols, the letters C,U and S are already deciphered for you. First you click on the letters spelling moon and werewolf and match those letters with the symbols that are shown for those clues, then the message starts to take on more meaning now that some of the letters have been revealed and you guess at the rest of the letters until the message makes sense. I thought it was a creative and entertaining game.
This edition also has a feature that will allow you to replay any puzzle or Hidden Object Scene that you have completed in the main game, enjoy!
November 10, 2014

DEPT 42
STORYLINE: Dept. 42 is a paranormal agency that investigates signs of evil by dark magic threatening people. The evil artifacts have been housed in a secure mansion. But it has burned and scattered the artifacts around the world. You go in search of them so the world can once again be safe.
GAMEPLAY: is straightforward. A wide variety of cases (9) cases to solve. The end of each case is a natural breaking point. You have a task list to guide you to the next steps. Game is lengthy enough that you won?t want to solve all 9 at one sitting, even though none of the cases is very long (35-50 minutes). You can replay the HOS and mini-games after you?ve finished playing the game.
THE REST: Nice blend of adventure and HOS. Artwork is drab, antiqued, and handdrawn, with objects blended into the background too well. I have a 27? screen and had trouble finding items; they were hard to differentiate when the background area is the same color scheme. You have to have the tip of your cursor (a finger) on an item to collect it. I took off 1 star for the difficulty of the HOS. HOS should be challenging but not make one frustrated and blind trying to find objects - and the hint is very slow to recharge. It could be a 4 1/2 star if things were more findable. Music is apropos for each case (ex: Indian music while investigating a case on a reservation). A nice game to fill your idle time.
October 24, 2012

Great game BUT
I like this game but it got very slow at the end if the hour
July 14, 2012

A disappointment
I gave this game 3 stars, but I would've liked to give it 4 stars - it was a very well executed game, good graphics, good storyline, but what let it down so much was that the HOS were just too difficult. I like my HOS to be challenging but not impossible. In each HOS there were at least 3 objects that were so well hidden as to be practically invisible, and I didn't do one scene without using the hint. Unfortunately the hint takes time to recharge, so I found myself wasting a lot of time on the HOS waiting for recharge, due to the practical invisibility of the objects. Once, even with the hint, I still had trouble seeing the object.
Also, knowing what to do next can be difficult as you have to guess what needs to be done, which I found to be a little annoying. I was disappointed, as this game could've been really good - the mini games weren't overly difficult, but I don't like to spend the majority of my time whilst playing a HOS/puzzle game, searching for objects in the HOS.
April 15, 2012

get your reading glasses out
the graphics are pretty dark in some of the hidden object games. hard to see some items when it isn't dark..or maybe it was just me. hint button rechrges fairly quickly. the mini games are somewhat hard for me, anyway. i am not usually good at them anyway. i don't do logic puzzles well or number puzzles well.
June 24, 2012